Vista final Beta - My views

[Dos_Box]

OK here goes, my first real opinions of the Vista 64 bit preview (I tried the 32 bit preview, but it ran painfully slowly). So, in no particular order.

1. It will ask your permission to do absolutley ANTHING. MMC? Are you sure? OK then. Internet access? Are you sure? Do you want his program to access the internet? It goes on, and on, and on........
You get the idea. I really hope there is a GPO to turn this off.

2. Printer management. Excellent. It allows you to connect directly to your network print server. How this ties up in practice I don't know yet, but the GPOs allow you to push out printers.

3. You WILL need a beefy spec PC to run it off. All of the benefits that Vista has will be negated by not having the hardware to run it off. Even the new movie maker told me off for having a naff video card (256MB Nvidia 5200) and declared it unsuitable for running Movie Maker off.

3. Network options. The network console is currently a mess and it is very hard to find out how to do anything. I wanted to create a connection to an FTP server and still can't find out how to do it!! VPN servers and other strange options are available aplenty, but basic things are missing.

4. The Documents and Settings folder is gone and has been rplaced with the more sensible 'Users' folder. Within this there have been changes too. Local settings and other folders have gone or been renamed, and new ones have appered.

5. There is a background defag option now, Handy.

6. There are new featurs such as network projectors and a RAM checking tool (very handy indeed) for advanced diagnostics.

7. The old menu bars are missing by default and M$ would like you to use wizards to do anything. After 15 mins I chose a 'classic' type of option and re-instated them.

8. The start menu is OK-ish, but displaying all of your programs scrunched up inside it is a mistake as on a laptop the text becomes tiny and unreadable.

I will list more later, but it is still very unpolished, and to be frank I can't see any reason to upgrade from XP as of yet. Perhaps it would be better for schools to install it when machies are swapped out rather than as part of an OS upgrade program. I look forward to the final version, but until then it offers no 'killer app' that would make people buy it for a purpose like with Macs.

[Geoff]

I shall be downgrading any Vista machines to XP Pro that turn up in my schools.

[Nij.UK]

yea i think i will be in the same situation at Geoff, i dont think there is one machine in my school that is up to spec to have Vista installed onto it

[webman]

What is their fascination with wizard-ising everything!? From Win 2000 => XP they ruined the user management control panel applet by making it a wizard. User management isn't the sort of procedure that is best done using a wizard. No reason to make the switch to Vista at all. It still doesn't have WinFS either.

[SimpleSi]

Can't wait for the next gen geeks to turn up here and castigate you old fogeys over your attitude to the decrepid and ancient OS known as XP and your lack of willingness to "upgrade" to Vista.

I give it 9 months from launch :P

regards
Simon

(But us very old fogey's will be here to help you through the pain :P )

Long live 98SE
or
WfW3.11 (a personal favourite)
...as he slowly nods off for his 3pm nap ...........

[NetworkGeezer]

woos! DOS 3.3 for ever!!!

I ported WGET so I can access eduGeek using raw HTML :P

[MrDylan]

Workbench on the Amiga all the way for me.

[Geoff]

OS/2 is where its at!

[E1uSiV3]

Hell I was playing atic atac on my Spectrum +2 on saturday, now theres hardcore oldie (and im only 22 lol the machine is as old as i am)

[Geoff]

Heh, I can beat that. I have a 1978 Apple II.

[SimpleSi]

OS/2 is where its at!

Your too young to even spell OS/2.

Your just trying to be one of us :P

regards
Simon

[Geoff]

I've been computing for 21 years!

[NetworkGeezer]

Speak and Spell don't count :P

[Geoff]

Commander Jameson reporting at Lave!

[mark]

Hows the performance/ what spec is your test machine? Wish I'd looked at that 1gz/512 Dell laptop Nick Umney had at the Conf now. ...how is the performance with the graphical effects turned off?